Tuesday, January 24, 2017

Using Sarah MacKenzie's January booklist as a guide, we picked up The Big Snow (among others) to read aloud this month. We read it today, to ease Davey from grumpy post-nap to the land of the living. It talks about feeding the animals who can't find food after the big snow.

Who could live with the idea of animals without food? Susannah certainly couldn't, so we got to work...

I remember making these as a child - do you? Luckily we're allergy-free in our house, so the old standards worked just fine. I've been asking my husband to save the cardboard tubes we use, so I was glad to have that stash for such a gloomy craft day as this. David was a non-participant, but he was glad to cheer us on from his perch in the highchair.

This is also, as an aside, a great sensory activity. Zuzu really loves the big corn box (think sand box, but filled with dried corn) at our favorite farm, so I think this was reminiscent, on a small scale, of that. If I had thought ahead more (read: at all), I think I would have poured the bird seed into a big bin and let her pat it onto the peanut butter that way. Even our curved plates made this...a bit messy. Definitely glad I did this before floor cleaning day tomorrow!

We had two bird feeders to fill in addition to our tubes, but I faced the question: with no low-hanging branches, how will we make the tubes stand up? Well, after rustling around in the garage for a bit, I found a broken undersink organizer that had been destined for Goodwill. Turn it upside down...voila. That's called upcycling, right? Very trendy I'm sure!

End result: happy girl, and hopefully happy birds once they realize we have much to offer.

It was easy, before we moved here, to romanticize the cold. Hot chocolate! Cozy days reading by the fire! Making bird feeders for winter animals! But the truth is, just like my labor-intensive drives to the beach and the messy-side of summer popsicle eating, making a winter that is cozy and enjoyable is work. I make hot chocolate that my children instantly reject as too hot or not tasting enough like tea - they want to read the same d-u-m-b board book that I agreed to bring home from the library in a moment of weakness. Making bird feeders is very messy! I'm pretty sure I'll be finding peanut butter and/or bird seed in my kitchen for weeks.

That life is work is a universal condition, either in the land of perpetual summer or that of ice and snow. To enjoy this work and let it sanctify me is my choice, prompted by grace. Little by little, I work my way to holiness, one book, one bird feeder, one child at a time.